Operation McFly
by queercapwriting
Summary: So this is me, hijacking Zelena's time travel spell for the gay agenda. What happens when Emma and Henry fell through the time travel portal and meet teenage Regina right before she meets Daniel? How will Emma's interactions with Regina in the past change Regina in the present? If Regina falls in love with Emma, will Emma and Henry blink out of existence? Mid-season 4, Swan Queen.
1. Chapter 1

_So this is me, hijacking Zelena's time travel spell for the gay agenda (thank me with reviews ;) )._

 _Originally inspired by Swan Queen Week's Day 3 Time Travel prompt, this story will wind up covering all the summer 2015 topics (including, yep, the bed-sharing, the jealousy, best friend romance, and, mmhmm, being trapped together)._

 _The premise: what would happen if Emma and Henry fell through the time travel portal (mid season 4, when Emma and Regina were just starting to become bffls) and they wound up meeting teenage Regina right before she met Daniel? How will Emma's interactions with Regina in the past change Regina in the present? If Regina falls in love with Emma, will she have eyes for Daniel? If she doesn't, will Emma and Henry blink out of existence?_

 _(Fair warning: references to and actual abuse portrayed throughout.)_

* * *

 **Storybrooke, Present Day**

"Kid, what the hell are you doing here? I thought you were supposed to be with David?"

Emma is yelling as an out-of-breath Henry skids to a halt next to her, just inside the barn where Zelena had cast her time travel spell.

"I was, but there was that earthquake, and I saw you slipping away, and I followed you!"

 _This never would have happened in New York_ , Emma thinks wildly, angry at how quickly Zelena was forgotten when the Snow Queen came to town. If they hadn't been so busy, maybe they all would have destroyed this site, making sure it could never be used again.

As it is, Emma can't say she's surprised: everyone in town seems to be desperate to change their fate. Regina. Gold. Most importantly, Regina. And, apparently, the Snow Queen.

Mother and son stare at the barn, surrounded by circularly flowing ice. It's like magma, except a soft blue, and so freezing that Emma is already shivering in memory of when she nearly froze to death.

"I don't know how she's doing it, kid, but the Snow Queen must have activated that old time portal. You gotta get outta here! We both do!"

Henry looks at her, mouth open, about to shout his answer into the roar of the ice.

But his response is cut off as the ground beneath him swirls and rises. He lets out a yell as a mound of ice swoops him higher, higher, higher. Too fact and too high to jump from safely.

"Mom!" he screams, and Emma wishes for Regina.

"Henry! It's okay, you're gonna be okay – " She scrunches up her eyes and wills him off of the rapidly forming ice cliff, but her heart is racing too hard and she is full of doubt: whenever she's used magic to move someone else, it is fast, harsh, rough.

Damaging.

Just like her. Damaged, and making other people damaged, too.

She's hesitated too long. He is falling, falling, falling. Falling into the portal. Falling into time.

She doesn't think about it. Doesn't blink, doesn't hesitate. She launches herself forward, over the rapidly-growing ice, with every ounce of strength she has.

She falls after her son, down, down, down, and back, back, back.

Back to the place Henry is thinking about as he falls. The place, the _time_ , when his mother – would he ever see her again? Of course, he has to have faith – was beaten down, maybe, but still believed. Believed, like Regina will need to believe to get him and his other mother back. Believed, like Emma will have to if she is going to get them home from where they were going.

From _when_ they are going.

From the time when Regina was only a few years older than he is now. From the time before she lost her first True Love.

* * *

 **Enchanted Forest, Many Years Ago**

"Henry! Henry! I've got you, are you okay?" There are tears in Emma's throat and he looks up from where he is sprawled in the middle of an open, green field. Her hands are on his arms, urging him up, up, up. His head hurts, and he thinks he might have hit it when he fell out of the portal, but he doesn't say anything about it.

At least it's warmer here.

 _Now_.

"Come on, we have to get out of sight until we figure out where we came out." He stumbles after Emma as she stomps up a rolling, grassy hill and dashes around some trees, beckoning to him to hurry even though he is only a breath behind her.

"That's the thing," Henry begins awkwardly. "I think I know where – uh, when – we are – "

But before he can explain, Emma puts her hand on his mouth urgently and pulls him behind a tree. The muted sound of horse hoofs galloping on grass makes them both flatten themselves behind a thick trunk.

Like mother like son, they peak their heads around opposite sides of the tree at the same time. Henry's eyes sparkle and he grins as a feeling of calm and excitement overcome him at once: he knows for sure, now, that they'll get home.

Emma's eyes, on the other side of the tree, widen and she barely suppresses a gasp.

" _Regina,_ " she breathes, because though she's now seen her in both an impressive array of pantsuits and full Evil Queen regalia, Emma has never seen her quite like this.

She is in riding gear, almost like David's, except it's blue. Blue and without all that leather, as though she only expects to ride with her horse, not fight. Her hair is braided sensibly down her back, and her eyes sparkle – so much like Henry's – as she gently encourages the horse she's riding to slow down and stop at the top of the hill.

 _She looks so young_ , Emma thinks, and her heart cinches.

Looking all around her with a slightly open-mouthed smile, Regina energetically and gracefully slides down to stand on her own feet. She pats the horse's neck and rubs affectionately along his fur pattern, pulling an apple out of her pocket as she does so.

Emma feels Henry glance at her and can make out his "this is so cool" smile from the corner of her eye, but she can give him the "this is not cool at all" speech later. Right now, she has eyes only for Regina, who's cleaning the apple off on her riding jacket and holding it out for her friend, rubbing his snout with her free hand. He leaves some of the apple for her and she beams at him.

"Thank you, Rocinante," she says brightly, biting into the horse-chewed apple nonchalantly.

Emma screws up her eyes, and she hears Henry give a very faint, but not quite displeased, "yuck." Emma reaches over behind the tree to nudge him, but she snaps a low hanging branch on the way. Mother, son, and one-day-mother all flinch, Emma and Henry jerking back behind the tree, hardly daring to breathe, and Regina tensing her entire body, eyes now widened with terror.

"Hello?" she calls in their direction. "Someone's there. I saw you."

Behind the tree, Emma and Henry exchange a wide-eyed glance.

And then Emma's heart twists into a tortured knot, because Regina's voice becomes a tortured knot, and Emma knows exactly why. Because she used to use that voice with those foster parents who…

"Mother? Mother, I – I'm sorry, I won't disobey you again. I'll be good, I promise, just please, show yourself. I'll make up for it, I swear. Mother, please."

Emma remembers how the silence of violent parents can be worse than their screams and their blows. Sometimes you can let your body drift and tune out the abuse. But you can't tune out the silence. The anticipation. The knowledge that what's ahead of you is so much worse than what you've been dealt before.

Emma can't let Regina live in fear of that silence. She won't. She steps out from behind the tree.

She holds her hands up.

"I'm sorry…" She glances at Henry for support, who's coming out from behind the tree, a mirror image of her. He nods, barely suppressing a smile, encouraging her. "… ma'am, we didn't mean to scare you. We're just… we were just… passing through."

There is a small sense of guardedness in her demeanor, but all of the fear in Regina's body melts away. Her brow furrows with bemusement as Emma and Henry approach her slowly.

Regina shakes her head slightly. "Where are you passing from? Such strange clothes, and I… " She laughs and pats Rocinante's neck. "There's no need to call me 'ma'am.' It's just Regina. And you two are…" The younger woman looks Emma up and down slowly.

 _Did she just lick her lips?_ Emma wonders, and gulps. Henry grins, his eyes darting back and forth between them eagerly. He steps forward.

"I'm Henry. And this is my mom, Emma. It's nice to meet you, Regina." Emma flinches inside, but lets it be, not knowing what else to do. She offers Regina a small smile. Regina captures her eyes playfully before releasing her, putting her hands on her thighs, and leaning forward to talk to Henry.

"And it's nice to meet you, Henry. That's a good name you've got there. My father's name." She beams at him and inclines her head fluidly to her left. "This is Rocinante. Have you ever met a horse before?"

"Sort of," Henry chuckles as he approaches Rocinante. With him occupied, Regina gives her full attention to his mother.

"Em-ma," she says softly, her eyes sparkling flirtatiously. "I'm afraid you answered none of my questions." The kinds of words she chooses are familiar, but her cadence is not. It is light, casual. Unburdened. Curious.

Hopeful.

Emma gulps again.

"Yeah, we're just… like I said, passing through…"

Regina squints at her curiously. "Are you on the run from someone? You sound like you don't want to share, but I'm guessing you won't make it very far in those outfits." She's smiling slightly as she digs into her pocket again to give Henry an apple to feed Rocinante.

"Thanks," Henry says brightly. "You wouldn't be able to get us some clothes, would you?"

Regina chews on her bottom lip, nodding to herself, watching Henry. "I think I can, yes…" she murmurs.

"But your mother," Emma whispers.

"You know Cora?" Regina asks, her voice trembling, her eyes suddenly wide with that fear again.

Emma's heart shrivels.

"You just seemed… you seemed scared of her. When you were calling out."

Regina nods, looking down, growing red. "Ah, yes, well… I apologize. My mother simply… does what's best for me. I'm… sorry you had to hear that."

"Don't worry about it," Emma murmurs.

Regina chews the bottom of her lips slightly, still nodding, as though she's having an argument with herself and winning.

"Well, then, I say the same to you: don't worry about it. I can get you both clothes to help you… blend in a little more." She leans back and absorbs their outfits with her eyes. "The strangest materials…" she murmurs, and Emma and Henry exchange a glance. "Follow me, then," she says, barely glancing over her shoulder as she walks with Rocinante back down the hill, her eyes constantly scanning the horizon.

"This is too risky, kid: we gotta get out of this situation. She knows our faces now, she'll recognize me the moment I get to Storybrooke, this can change everything for the worse – " Emma mutters quickly as they walk.

"But this is before she turned bad: this is when she still had hope. Maybe she can help us find a way back –"

"Only Rumplestiltskin can do that, kid, and we don't even know where to begin finding him – "

"Exactly. Mom finds him soon, she _can_ help us –"

Emma glances at Regina, walking ahead of them, who turns around, meets her eye, and smiles.

"She's so… _trusting_ now, even though Cora…Henry, this is too risky, we need to try to find Rumpelstiltskin on our own."

"We'll work it out," Henry assures her in a bad whisper. "We'll call it…" He squints at her, thinking hard. And then he smiles enormously. "We'll call it Operation McFly."

Emma mirrors his grin, nodding. "Marty McFly. Nice one, kid."

But they are approaching a stable, now, and Henry can't control the gasp that slips out of his mouth. He tries to disguise it as a cough.

A man in a brown tunic and trousers with somewhat wind-tussled hair is on his knees in one of the horse's stalls, cleaning it out. He looks up as Henry makes all that noise in his throat while Regina, Rocinante, him, and Emma approach the stable. Emma looks at Henry quizzically, but his eyes are wide and only looking at the young man.

"Hello," Regina offers the young man, her voice sounding confused. Realization starts to dawn on Emma slowly, slowly, a pit even bigger than the one that was already there starting to form in her stomach.

"These are my family's stables – I'm Regina. And you are…" She turns to wink at Emma, who wishes Henry were somewhere far away. And far safer. "I seem to be saying that a lot today," Regina says coyly. Emma attempts a witty response, but it comes out as a squeak. Regina purses her lips into a small smile and turns back to Daniel, who has gotten to his feet and removed his work gloves.

"It's an honor, m'lday. Your mother hired me just this morning to work with your fine fellows here." He pats Rocinante tentatively, happily. "My name's Daniel."

* * *

 **Storybrooke, 4 Years Ago**

"Henry? Henry? Oh!" The Mayor runs in her stilettos out to embrace the small boy, throwing her arms around him even though he doesn't return the gesture.

"Are you okay?" She pulls back, her hands on her shoulders, to look him in his beautiful little face. She'd thought she lost him. After all she went through to get him. She thought she'd lost him.

But maybe she already has: he might be home, safe and in her arms, but he is glaring at her as she looks into his eyes.

"Where have you been?" Her voice trembles with pent-up anxiety.

"What happened?" She glances at the woman accompanying him, but only has the emotional capacity to register blonde hair and a red leather jacket.

Her eyes return to Henry. Since she got him from Boston, he has always been her rock. He will give her an explanation for why he ran away from her. He is all that matters.

"I found my _real_ mom!"

He darts out of her grasp and past her into the house. Her heart shatters in her chest, but she cannot cry yet. Not in front of some stranger. Or Graham. Her eyes drag slowly to the woman, and she takes in her face.

And suddenly she has never been so frightened – or so exhilarated – in her life.

"Emma? _You're_ Henry's birth mother? But you… it can't – you – I spent all that time – "

But the woman just stares back at her, her brow slightly furrowed. "I'm sorry? Ms… Mills, right? Are you okay? I've never… I'm sorry, but I don't know you."

Regina's face hardens; her tears evaporate. Her voice re-laces itself with nails, and she plasters onto her face a smile honed by years of being married to a man she didn't love. "No, you're right, obviously, I – I'm sorry. I've been distressed by Henry's disappearance. I'm sure you understand."

"Okay," Emma says, her voice cautious but open and non-judgmental. She understands what fear of losing your family can do to your state of mind.

"But my name… _is_ Emma…" That smile again. Something about it breaks Emma's heart, but she can't understand what.

"A mere coincidence, I'm sure." Graham clears his throat and offers to check on Henry. Regina dismisses him without a thought.

Her eyes drag over Emma's body, taking in the exact curves she remembers from when she was a teenager in the Enchanted Forest.

"Now. How would you like a glass of the best apple cider you've ever tasted?"

"Got anything stronger?" Emma asks.

Regina smiles and leads her inside, but the smile evaporates when Emma can't see her face.

 _This isn't possible_ , is all she can think to herself. _She can't be here. She can't._

 _And if she can't be here – because it's impossible – then she certainly can't stay._


	2. Chapter 2

**Enchanted Forest, Many Years Ago**

"Well then, Daniel, your first task for me is this: can I trust you to find Emma and her son Henry some less…" She looks Emma up and down again, and Henry nods slowly as he watches the lump of Emma's gulp travel down her throat. "… _noticeable_ clothes? They need safe passage through our land, and will hardly be able to pass safely in these."

Daniel nods as he takes in Henry's denim and Emma's leather, but he bows his head, then, asking no questions.

" _I did not hire you to ask questions, and you shan't: is that understood?"_ Cora had said when she agreed to let him become their stable boy, and it was understood.

"Of course, m'lady." He turns to Emma, and she concentrates as she stares at his face. And then, like a bolt of lightening, she remembers why she knows his name. Why Henry's eyes nearly bugged out of his skull when he saw him.

 _Daniel_. Regina's first true love.

She carefully wipes her face clean of emotion and hopes that the others can't hear her heart beating as loudly as she hears it.

"I'm afraid I don't make a habit of carrying women's clothing with me – " Daniel apologizes to Emma meekly.

"Do I look like the ball gown type?" she interrupts him, losing the battle with her emotions. Her smirks softens her snapping; the way she sweeps her hands awkwardly away from her body is self-deprecating; Henry is turning laughter into snorting, and Regina is trying and failing not to lick her lips.

But Emma only sees Daniel, his smile so cautious, so tentative, so aware of his need to show her respect. She covers it up well with her sarcasm, but Emma's stomach is solidifying: Regina will fall in love with this man, and then he will die. And then she will spend years thirsting for revenge, years preparing to cast the curse that made everyone who they are.

Or, she should.

But she's not looking at Daniel with gaga eyes.

She's saving those looks for Emma.

And, in spite of herself, Emma likes it. Even though she knows it puts her entire existence at risk.

But then she looks at Henry, and she knows that she can't like it. She can't let Regina like her. She can't even let Regina remember her.

She's convinced Rumplestiltskin to help her – with a portal and with a memory potion – before, and she's pretty sure she can do it again. Neal – Baelfire – is still a potent weapon with him.

But she can't make Regina fall in love with Daniel, like she's supposed to. So they need to leave. Now. And let fate takes its course.

"Any clothes you could give us would be great, Daniel, and then we really do have to get back on the road." She sends a small smile in the direction of Regina's frown.

"I thought you could stay a little longer – at least for the night," Regina says to Emma as Daniel hoists himself into the loft of the stables and shuffles through the bags he keeps his clothes in.

Emma grimaces a smile at her. "That's… that's sweet, Regina, but we really have to be on our way. Soon as we change."

"You're in danger," Regina says softly, ignoring Daniel's firm jump back down from the loft, the way he's showing Henry some of his old clothes, glancing furtively towards the two women.

"We'll be fine," Emma tells her. "We'll be fine, we just have to change and get on our way."

"And there's nothing I can do to help?"

Emma smiles softly at the younger version of the woman who's become…

 _You thought we were friends?_

"Why do you wanna help us so bad? You don't know us, you…"

Regina looks around and makes sure the stable boy is occupied with Henry, who's shucked out of that strange sweater and is now pulling on a lightly stained white tunic. "I know what it's like to want to run away," she murmurs.

Emma nods. "I should…" She jerked her hand toward the pile of clothes, topped with old riding boots, that Daniel had set aside for Emma.

"Of course." Regina steps away from Emma toward Henry and Daniel. Emma exhales shakily before tugging herself up into the loft to change.

"You know," she calls down while she's struggling to get Daniel's old trousers up her thighs, sending strands of hay sprinkling down to tangle in Henry's hair. "We could really use a map of the Forest, you know, to help us on our way. Would you guys be able to – "

"Ah, Regina, here you are. I see you've met our new stable boy," an imperious voice interrupts. "But who is this?"

Emma's heart runs cold, and she looks down from the loft to see Regina, cautiously rigid and wide-eyed, facing the door to the stable.

She recognizes the voice.

Cora.

Emma backs against the wall of the loft, pressing herself away from Cora's line of sight. She fastens an old blue cloak of Daniel's around her throat and waits, flexing her fingers.

She wishes she had a sword.

"Mother, this is Henry. He – "

"I used to work with Daniel on Firefly Hill, ma'am. But business is failing there, and I came to see if I could work in the stables with Daniel here. Uh, ma'am." Emma puts her hand to her mouth, not knowing whether to grimace or smile at the kid's quick thinking. Keeping her out of sight. She hopes Regina and Daniel will go with it.

"He was just telling me how nice it is to work here so far. Ma'am."

Emma scrunches her face up, flinching. _Overkill, kid_ , she thinks. But she inclines her head toward where she imagines Cora is standing, and hopes.

Hopes, because the kid taught her to.

Hopes, because this younger version of Regina still actively hopes.

Hopes.

And then she hears Cora's footsteps approaching Henry, and her heart leaps into her throat.

She raises her chin so she can see Regina tensing, her eyes on Cora.

"So you'd like to work for me, would you, little boy? And where are your parents?"

Emma hears Henry shifting his feet below her, and she can imagine the forlorn look on his face.

"They died. Daniel's been showing me how to work in stables for years: the last people we worked for said I was pretty good."

"You said nothing about this boy when I hired you," Cora says to Daniel, though she is looking at Henry, her hand holding his chin so she can examine his face. Henry returns her gaze innocently.

Emma inches closer to the edge of the loft. Her hands ball into fists when she sees Cora's hands on Henry. She sees Daniel glance at Regina, whose eyes widen with meaning.

He clears his throat. "He was ill last week, ma'am, and I didn't know whether he'd be up to working again any time soon." Regina clears her throat softly. Daniel stumbles on. "But he clearly is, ma'am, since he made it all the way here on his own." Regina blinks at him. "He's a very dedicated worker, ma'am. You won't be sorry if you hire him."

"Won't I?" Cora asks softly, more to herself than to Daniel. She lets go of Henry's face abruptly.

Silence dominates the stable. Rocinante breathes out hard.

"Gentlemen, leave us. My daughter and I have things to discuss."

Emma watches Henry shuffle out with Daniel, his eyes looking anywhere but up at the loft.

They might easily be able to erase Regina's memories of themselves once they get a potion from Rumplestiltskin. But Cora? She'd recognize a potion instantly. So she can't see Emma, not when they're supposed to meet for the first time in the Enchanted Forest, when Cora is disguised as Lancelot, when Emma is still so unsure of magic, her parents, herself. She cannot see her.

Even if that means their path to Rumplestiltskin just got a little more complicated.

"Regina," Cora begins sweetly, and her daughter's eyes fight to remain wide and innocent.

"Daniel doesn't know that little boy, does he?"

"Don't punish him, Mother –"

Cora raises her hand, and Regina's feet leave the ground. She splutters to get breath out of her tightened chest. She kicks. Cora makes her rise higher, squeezes her tighter.

"Oh, I won't punish him." Emma is biting her bottom lip so hard she tastes blood. Cora continues, as though magically squeezing her daughter while levitating her is as casual and innocuous as taking tea. And to her, it is.

"He works for cheap, and now I get two for the price of one. A stable boy protecting one of your strays doesn't interest me, Regina. But I am interested in you – " Belt straps appear out of thin air and tighten themselves around Regina's arms, fastening them to her sides. She kicks. They get tighter. She stops kicking. She can't breathe.

"Mother, please – "

"I'm speaking, Regina," Cora singsongs, and Regina is floating so high right now that she can make eye contact with Emma, whose eyes are wide with terror. She has to fight for her, damn the consequences, damn –

But Regina shakes her head almost imperceptibly at her. Emma takes to biting her fist instead of her lip. It immediately feels wet, and she glances down, expecting to see more blood. But it's not blood. It's tears. She's crying.

Regina looks away from the woman who is crying for her. The woman who wants to protect her, but is listening to her caution not to. Is respecting her. She looks down at her mother.

"I am _interested,_ Regina, in having a daughter who _obeys_ me. Who does not lie to me, and who does not goad the help into doing so. Now, are you going to be a good girl, Regina, and stay out of the stables? You don't belong here, Regina."

"I love it here, Mother," Regina chokes out, her voice thin and about to break, and Emma is ashamed: she is crying, but Regina is not.

Cora's laugh tinkles like a sickeningly sweet bell, and Emma wants to channel all of the rage she's ever felt into the woman's chest.

Snow White didn't start all this.

Cora did.

"Well, then, I know exactly what to do. Tonight, the stable boys will stay in our cellar. It'll be dry enough in there. But I doubt it will be very dry in here: there's a storm on the horizon."

Regina's eyes widen, and she squeaks slightly as she gasps for more breath. For a moment Emma doesn't understand why. And then –

"I know how frightened you are of storms, Regina." That false, practiced laugh again. "How you used to take off for the stables in the middle of lightening storms, terrified that the stables would catch fire and Rocinante wouldn't be able to escape. Let's see how much you'll love these stables after spending a night in here, during the storm. Unable to free the horses, and unable to leave."

"Mother –" Regina gasps.

But Cora is already walking out of the stables. "Good night, Regina," she calls, and as the wooden doors slam closed behind her, Regina, still buckled into her restraints, is tossed magically straight into the loft.

Straight into Emma's arms.

Storybrooke, 4 Years Ago

"So… Em-ma." She can't stop rolling the name over in her lips. The name she's avoided saying for so many years.

Their fingers touch when she hands the woman a glass of cider. Her eyes fly to Emma's to see if she feels it. The woman – _Is she younger than me by now? Must be if she didn't come through with the curse – she couldn't have come through with the curse –_ locks eyes with her as though feeling a spark of… something… but her gaze is new. Unfamiliar. She doesn't remember.

 _Or she's not the same person. Some cruel joke. But by whom?_

"How did he find me?" this woman is asking, and Regina reminds herself that this is not the woman who showed up out of nowhere on that hill and held her all night long when Cora trapped them together during that storm. This is not the woman who tried to protect her from her mother. This is not the woman who was on the run from something that she never got the chance to tell her about.

Because she left her too soon.

She is not that woman.

But she looks like her, and Regina thinks that if she could just touch her again, be close to her, she would feel like her. Smell like her.

But it is not her.

It _can't_ be her.

She must be someone's weapon. Someone who knows Regina's weakness.

 _Love is weakness, Regina_ , she hears in her mind.

She closes her voice, her mind. Her hopes. Henry is her only priority now. Just Henry. And this woman – whoever she is, because she _cannot_ be who she appears to be – is a threat to him.

"No idea. When I adopted him, he was only three weeks old. Records were sealed. I was told the birth mother didn't want to have any contact.

Emma's voice is casual. "You were told right."

"And the father?" Her voice is tight, sealed. Like she wishes her heart would be.

"There was one," Emma tells her, and jealously surges in Regina's heart.

"Do I need to be worried about him?" she asks, for more reasons than she would ever admit out loud.

"Nope. He doesn't even know."

Regina allows herself a small smile. _Good_ , she thinks to herself, against her own better judgment.

 _Good._


	3. Chapter 3

_Hello again and apologies for taking so long to post the next chapter - depression's rough._ _Thank you so, so much to those of you who encouraged me to take this up again: I can't tell you how that helped! :)_

 _Heads up - even though this chapter has a lot of cute hurt/comfort fluff, it also has some references to abuse (Cora-related). Also, this story is going to get upsetting. Like, character death style upsetting. Not in this chapter, but it's going to hint at it, so... so you've got a shot at being prepared._

 _Don't worry - once [pun!] I finish this, there will be more fluff and hot and heavy Swan Queen times, as per my other fics ;)_

 _Happy reading, and comments are love!_

 ** _Enchanted Forest, Many Years Ago_  
**

Rocinante whinnies furiously, terrified, trying to get to his friend. Regina wriggles with her bound hands and feet and try and see him over the loft's edge.

"Rocinante, it's alright. I'm alright, see?" His whinnying stops tentatively and though Emma can't see him, she imagines that he's craning his neck up toward the sound of Regina's soft voice. "Hush now, love, she'll come back and punish you, too."

The soothingness and matter-of-factness punches Emma in the gut much harder than Regina crashing into her with the force of Cora's magical blow had done. She swallows tightly and hopes Regina doesn't hear it, even though her head is mere inches from Emma's face.

Satisfied that Rocinante is calm now – he is not afraid of storms himself, but Regina knows how her mother terrifies him, how he always tries to protect her from her fear during storms – Regina twists to look at Emma, with eyes that make it clear that her hands would be all over her if they weren't clamped down. "Are you hurt too terribly? You didn't have to do that. Catch me like that."

Catch her Emma had, taking the entire blow into the loft wall when Cora blasted Regina against it. She's banged up and in more pain than she'd care to admit, so she just smirks; it probably wouldn't improve the situation, or Regina's nerves, if she mentioned how dizzy the impact with the loft wall had made her. Or how winded.

If she let on that she'd had the air knocked out of her, Regina would surely shift and slide off of her, out of her arms, to a place where Emma couldn't smell the apple on her breath or see the scar – a newly healed cut – above her lips.

A cough forces itself out of Emma's breathless mouth, and Regina, as predicted, shifts immediately, collapsing off of her onto her own – nearby, Emma notes despite herself – patch of hay. "I'm sorry, of course I'm too heavy to –"

"Hey, hey, you're not," Emma protests, trying to gather the young woman back into her arms, "you're not, just, your mother, you know, she's got a strong… whaddaya call a magical right hook, huh?"

Regina giggles nervously. Emma is enchanted against her will.

 _Regina Mills, conquerer of realms_. _At my crappy jokes. I think the Savior has a new mission if we ever get h—_

"Henry!" Because now Emma is on her feet, the shock of Cora's spell throwing Regina into the loft wearing off harshly as she thinks of her son. "Is her alright, what would she have done – "

"Emma, don't!" Regina screams as Rocinante lets out another whinny. Emma obeys, stopping just short of the loft's edge, the hem of Daniel's borrowed cloak sweeping out in front of her and snapping with the fierce sound of fibers being unraveled by fire.

Emma swallows. "Henry," she demands, dropping to her knees in front of Regina, slamming her fists on top of the flames to quelch them.

"He'll be fine," Regina says in a small voice. "Mother said it: she has two workers for the price of one now. She's alright punishing me by keeping me up here with a storm coming: she won't so easily dispose of future methods of hurting me."

Emma's heart seizes as she hears in Regina's voice the beginnings of the future Queen's rage, sharp sense of bitterness, and uncanny ability to unveil people's most manipulative motives. But then she meets Regina's eyes, and the glimpse of the future is gone.

"He'll be okay, Emma."

Emma knows Cora better than Regina thinks she does, but she swallows and tries to believe the younger woman. Believe. She has to. Henry would want her to.

"Okay, okay, fine, but what about you?" the Savior wants to know, nodding down toward Regina's restraints and the swollen redness that's beginning to seep out of the places that the leather straps are binding her arms to her sides.

Shadows cross over Regina's face again. "I can't free myself until Mother decides I've learned my lesson." She struggles faintly as though to prove her point. "They can't come undone without…" She shifts her eyes around as though terrified of what her next word will be, but Emma already knows.

"Magic," they whisper together, and Emma tastes the word rolling out of Regina's full lips.

Regina's body reflects Emma's shudder. They unlock their eyes suddenly, as though the contact scalded. Emma weighs her options. Before she can make any decisions, a massive clap of thunder slams, sounding for all its worth like it is not only right above them, but inside them. Regina's entire body strains violently against her bindings, fear taking over her eyes.

Emma reaches for her, unable to tell whether she's crying because of the thunder itself or because of the pain from her body convulsing with fear, grating against the straps like that. Porbably both. Either way, all Emma knows now – just like she knew it back on the hill when she revealed her and Henry's presence to spare the teenaged woman any extra anxiety – all Emma knows now is that she can't bear for Regina to be in pain any longer.

She runs a tentative hand across the cowering, sobbing woman's back, cooing to her softly as she pulls her into her chest, wrapping her arms around her back, a sense of extreme surrealism setting in around her.

 _How many times have I wished –_ she banishes that thought and any like it.

"Shh, Regina, I know, I know, it's… it's okay. The storm's not gonna hurt you. Not even lightening, okay, because… because the stable's at a low point of the hills, right, so we'll be okay, it'll be okay, hey, hey, breathe, breatheeee… That's right –" Her grip tightens as Regina whimpers at another flash, flinching terribly at the boom that follows. "I've got you, okay? Any storm wants to hurt you, it's gonna have to go through me, okay?"

 _God, I'm shit at this._

But a sound comes from Regina's mouth that sounds like a small, tentative chuckle, and the younger woman sniffles and pulls her head away from Emma's chest so they can look each other in the face. Her eyes are wide and red and there's a small, clear droplet of snot slowly dripping out of her nose. Somehow, Emma isn't surprised when she realizes that she's never seen anyone look so beautiful when they cry.

"But _why_?" Regina croaks. "You must think I'm such a fool – we're strangers and I'm sobbing like a child about a storm…"

"Hey," Emma says, wiping Regina's nose with the back of her hand. "It's not childish to be afraid of storms. You know what I'm afraid of, still, huh?" Regina huffs her assent for Emma to go on. The blonde gets the sense that the teenager is humoring her, but at least it's taking her mind off the storm raging outside, so she lets it slide. "I'm afraid of spiders. You know, and not just big ones, but like, tiny little things that probably can't even hurt a fly because they're smaller than flies." Emma furrows her brow suddenly, looking past Regina's face as though staring into a dark tunnel. "What _do_ the smallest spiders eat then?"

Another thunder clap. Another shudder from Regina, but it's smaller this time. It's big enough, though, to bring Emma's musings to a halt. "Sorry," she mutters, embarrassed, but Regina seems pleased. She snuggles back into Emma's chest, who gulps again. This time, she knows Regina feels it, but she's not sure she can do anything about that.

"Uh, hey, let's uh, let's see about those bindings on your arms and legs, huh?" Regina huffs like she doesn't want to leave her spot in Emma's arms. Her voice is muffled when she says, "I told you already: they can only come off with magic."

But as she flinches again with the sound of another thunderclap, Emma refuses to ignore the redness growing on her wrists any longer. "What if…" Another gulp. "What if I could use magic to get them off for you?"

As she feared she would, Regina goes rigid in her arms.

"Magic is… You're kind, you can't have… no…" Emma sucks on her own bottom lip and doesn't move; like she might if she were trying to work up the steadiness she needed to approach a deer. She noted that Regina didn't move away from her, didn't move out of her arms. Her entire body now felt like bone instead of muscle, but Emma could work with that.

"Magic doesn't have to be used for terrible things, Regina. I…" _How much can I say here?_ "I was born with light magic. I was born with… I can help you, Regina. Please. Please let me."

Regina's voice is a broken whisper when it breaks through her lips. She's trembling as she looks up at the woman holding her. "I barely know you."

"You know your mother," Emma said gently, without accusation. "You know your mother, and look how she uses magic. Sure, okay, you don't know me, not really, but you said I'm kind. And I took a blow against a stable wall for you, didn't I, huh?" There is no arrogance in her voice, no cockiness. Just pleading. Pleading for the trembling woman to let her take the binds off of her before her wrists starts bleeding. Before Cora is able to leave more scars on her body than just the one above her lip. Emma doesn't entertain the idea that there might already be more that she can't see. If she does, she will weep, and she can't weep, not now. Not when she has to help Regina get through this night, find Henry, and leave this younger woman for the older woman back in Storybrooke, the older woman who may be frantically searching for her right now, who might be worried sick about their son. Emma has to bring him back to her. She has to. But first she has to give this Regina, this young Regina, a small gift, a small piece of hope, before she erases all memories of it before her trip home.

"I won't hurt you, Regina. I won't." She isn't sure where her confidence is coming from: she's been having so much trouble controlling her magic, lately. Maybe it's what Elsa's been saying: that she and Regina have this… this tie, this bond. That she has to fight for her. Fighting for her? She knows she can use magic properly for that.

Emma raises a hand slowly and brushes a stray piece of hair out of Regina's face and tucks it tenderly behind her ears. Another clap of thunder slams around them, but Regina barely flinches. Her eyes belong to Emma and Emma's belong to her.

"Alright," Regina says in the softest of voices, just as her face is lit up by a flash of lightening.

Emma swallows. Emma nods. Emma swallows again. Regina shifts away from her to give her room, and the loss of contact keens through the blonde's entire body. She swallows one more time for good measure and focuses all her energy on Regina's fear, on her pain, on her resignedness to letting her mother treat her this way. And hot, heady magic starts seeping through her fingertips.

Regina gasps as whispy strands of purple and golden threads weave themselves out of Emma's fingertips and entwine in the binds on Regina's arms and legs. Like miniature, flying snakes, they wriggle in and out of the bindings until they're cut through, falling off onto the hay and sizzling straight out of existence upon losing touch with Regina's body. The threads aren't done, though. Emma twitches her fingers back toward Regina's body, her tongue poking out of the right side of her mouth and beads of sweat starting to glisten on her forehead.

Strands of purple and gold encircle Regina's arms and legs where the straps had been, and she gasps but doesn't move away, enchanted by the soothing cool feel of them, even though they look scalding hot to the touch. The rough, painful redness that she'd been feeling from rubbing her body against the restraints eases immediately on contact with Emma's magic, the swelling reducing and her skin regaining its more typical smooth sheen. She exhales heavily in relief, in pleasure, and Emma fights a pool of heat deep down in her core as she struggles to keep focus long enough to finish healing Regina's wounds.

When there's no more external damage to heal, Emma drops her fingers and the threads disappear unceremoniously from the air.

And for a few long moments, the only sound in the loft – above the pounding rain, above the claps of thunder, above the rattling wind – the only sound is the rise and fall of Regina's chest, her breath intermingling with Emma's in the charged space between them. Both women's lips are slightly parted, and neither woman knows that anything exists except the others' eyes.

One of Rocinante's friends whinnies at a dream that he's having, and breaks the spell.

"Thank you," Regina croaks, and Emma hears the dripping sensuality that she'll come to associate later – has already associated? She decides to stop thinking about the grammar of time travel, because a headache wouldn't help anyone – with Mayor Mills.

"'Course," Emma murmurs, her voice dipped lower than it usually is. She swallows and watches as Regina – tentative and confident, somehow, in the same breath – shifts to curl back into Emma's arms. Emma doesn't object, but she does raise her eyebrows slightly.

"I'm still afraid of the storm," Regina mutters, a self-deprecating playfulness lining her words. Emma grins crookedly and settles against the wall of the loft with Regina laying between her legs, thinking about how in the hell she can possibly extricate herself from this… whatever this is… long enough to get her and Henry back to Storybrook. Back to the Regina who knows to be worried about them both. The Regina who knows who Henry is – who loves Henry more than anything in the world. Here, Henry has only one mother. Here, Emma has a beautiful version of Regina in her arms, and it's enticing, but the version of Regina she… no, she can't admit… The Regina she knows, in Storybrook, is also this woman, and so many other women, all wrapped up in one, and Emma needs to get back to her… Emma needs her, and maybe… just maybe Regina needs her, too…

She rams these things all to the front of her mind over and over and over again. She needs to keep these thoughts fresh, or she might let the ease of this feeling overtake her, tempt her to stay. She has immense tenderness… and perhaps even other things… for this woman, but she needs to get herself and Henry back to _her_ Regina.

But maybe not for another few minutes.

"Where did you learn magic?" Regina asks her in an almost sleepy voice.

From you. You teach it to me because I don't trust anyone else to, and because you want to protect me from going through what you did. What you will. God.

"Someone I… someone I trust more than anyone in the world taught me. I mean, I didn't always trust her… because I didn't always understand her. But I do now, I think – I think we understand… I think we understand each other, you know, and she… she taught me how to use magic."

" _She?_ " Regina asks, and Emma gulps, both at the content of the question and at the trace of competitive disappointment she thinks she's detecting in Regina's voice.

"Uh, uh, I, uh…" _Shit shit shit shit shitshitshitshitshit._ "Henry's other mom."

Regina twists her neck to look up at Emma, her brow furrowed thoughtfully, considering Emma intently. Emma swallows but tries to return the younger woman's gaze impassively. She's stared down people who have problems with her sleeping with women – or, in this case, at least, loving – no, not – no – _whatever_ , with women before. She pretends that's all this is and keeps her expression even.

After a few moments and a medium-sized flinch from a thunder clap, Regina nods as though deciding something.

"Hey," Emma says suddenly.

"Hey," Regina says, her voice with gravel in it, forcibly bringing Emma back to Neverland. She swallows yet again and wonders if it's possible to run out of spit.

"I can probably get us outta here." She nods her head toward the invisible barrier between them and the loft edge.

Regina's face clouds up, and she looks almost… disappointed. It's her turn to swallow. But her curiosity overtakes her. "Could you?"

Emma looks over Regina at the invisible barrier and flexes her fingers, feeling the heady rush that accompanies magic sweep through her body. "I think so."

"Where would we go? The storm…"

"Where would Daniel be with Henry?" Regina bites the inside of her cheek, considering briefly.

"Close by, in the servants' quarters," she offers. Emma nods.

"Then we could go there." She hugs Regina's body close to her, relishing the feeling and swearing that if she gets back to Storybrooke… _when_ she gets back to Storybrooke… she'll make sure this isn't the last time she holds Regina like this. If she wants, that is. Of course. "Don't worry, I'll keep you safe from the storm."

Something stirs in Regina's core and she stares up at Emma as a shudder runs through her body. "You already have," she whispers headily, and she raises her lips to meet Emma's, whose breath hitches with disbelief and… something else, something deeper, something more powerful.

She wants her lips to meet Regina's, she wants to never stop kissing this woman. She wants to let Regina kiss her, to cover Regina's body with hers, to hold her hand behind the younger woman's head as she slips inside her, kissing every single inch of her body, making her feel the kind of loved that she'll feel her whole life through…

But then she won't fall in love with Daniel. Then she won't become the Regina she's come to know and love. Then she'll never become the woman Emma fell… yes, damnit, fell in love with… in the first place. Then there would be no Henry.

And besides, her first kiss with Regina can't be with this young woman who doesn't know her. She wants it – she needs it – to be with the woman who "Miss Swan-ed" her through the first couple years of their lives together, who is only know starting to say her name… Em-ma…

She takes Regina by the shoulders gently and stops her when her lips is just an inch from her own mouth. _Hardest thing I've ever done_ , she thinks, but when she meets Regina's hurt eyes, she knows the harder thing is going to be explaining.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have assumed, why would you want to kiss me, you have Henry's other mother, I'm being childish, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Regina tries to squirm away, but Emma holds her fast to her, though not hard enough to keep her there if Regina really wants to move.

"No, no, no, shh, no, Regina, it's not… it's not like that. I want…" She opts, for once, for honesty. "I want to kiss you, I do. I just…" More honesty. "I really care about you, even though…" Some dishonesty. "Even though we don't know each other so much yet, and…" More honesty. "I want the first time I kiss you to be special, to be perfect, not trapped in some dingy loft during a storm when we're both scared and nervous and all that."

"You… you want to kiss me?" Regina asks in a small voice, and Emma grins crookedly at her.

"Yeah."

Regina smiles, and her face lights up the entire loft. Emma's heart does a backflip. In her belly.

"So let's get this barrier open," Regina says, flipping to her feet and offering a beaming hand to Emma. "I want to run in the rain with you," she whispers. Emma grins again, and takes the hand Regina's offering.

"You got it," she tells her as she sets her feet in the hay, preparing her body for the amount of energy that's got to run through it to melt Cora's enchantment around the loft.

Miles and miles away, in a castle enchanted with more magic than Emma could dream of taking down by herself, a thin creature with mottled, glistening hands twiddles his fingers together with glee as he stares into the crystal ball he'd… liberated… from a powerful witch passing through his land.

"Hee hee hee heee!" he giggles manically, his voice high and coated with unrestrained glee as he bounces on the balls of his feet.

He watches carefully as the blonde woman dissolves the barrier his pupil had cast around the loft. He giggles some more as Emma offers a hand to Regina and they descend the loft ladder together, the teenager's face beaming and Emma's only just more restrained.

Rumplestiltskin touches his fingertips together in glee, knowing what his next move must be. He flicks his wrist loosely so that he can contact Cora.

* * *

 _ **Storybrooke, 4 Years Ago**_

He doesn't even look at her as he runs inside, brushing past her like she's a nuisance that isn't worth his notice rather than a terrified, devoted mother that he's run away from twice in as many days.

She turns to watch him run up the stairs without giving her a single glance, and he heart breaks in two. She twists her face back into a part sexy, part skeptical, part apologetic, part _everything_ half-smile as she turns back to Emma, or – no, this woman can't be Emma. Not _her_ Emma. Not the Emma who held her through that storm, who showed her that magic could be good, and then… no. No. This woman can't be _that_ Emma.

She can't help but look her up and down rapidly, though. Again. Because how could she possibly resist taking in that body again? In full Mayor mode, she struts toward her, walking out on the porch toward where the blonde woman stands haplessly. She puts her hands uncharacteristically in her blazer pockets, not knowing what else to do with them. Not knowing what else to do with them because all she wants to do is wrap them in this woman's hair… But this _cannot_ be the woman she knew…

"Thank you," she offers, her eyes burning.

"No problem," the woman in the red jacket answers, her left arm flopping at her side as she grins almost sheepishly. Just like the woman she remembers, down to the leather and awkward smile. Letting Mayor-mode take over, she makes small talk. _Best I can do is try to figure out who the hell she is and how she… how she_ is _so like… like Emma._

"He seems to have taken quite a shine to you."

Again with that intoxicating grin and awkward arm gesturing. And a little laugh. A little laugh that forces Regina to remember their descent from the loft that stormy night, the way Emma – _her_ Emma – offered Regina her hand, the way Regina tried to refuse out of pride, the awkward way they'd both laughed it off - "You know it seems kind of crazy. Yesterday was my birthday. And—when I blew out the candle on this cupcake I bought myself, I actually made a wish. That I didn't have to be alone on my birthday. And then Henry showed up…"

No. No no no no.

"I hope there's no misunderstanding here." Her voice isn't quite as harsh as she'd intended it to be, but it's hard being harsh to a woman who looks… who looks like the woman whose magic undid Cora's… But still, even not-as-harsh-as-she'd-wanted is harsh enough, and Emma seems thrown.

"I'm sorry?"

"Don't mistake this as invitation back into his life." _If you were ever in his life. In his life when he showed up on that hill with you, all those years ago… When he wept over your limp body before falling into that portal…_

"Oh," the woman who must be pretending to be Emma offers dimly.

The rest of their exchange is coated with malice, is covered with distrust, is dripping with betrayal deeper than just 'I'm afraid that you might try to take my son from me.' Because she can imagine the opposite: sharing him, sharing his love, sharing… life… with this woman. Emma Swan. Henry's mother.

 _Henry._ Of course. He's been too young for her to see it yet, but he… he looks, already, remarkably, like that boy who appeared on that hill with his mother… with Emma… How could she not have realized?

Regina has to push this woman – whoever she is – away, and fast. Surprises have always terrified Regina. Surprises like realizing that her son resembles a younger version of a dead woman's son from so many years ago – how can her ten year old son resemble someone who was a teenager years before the Curse? His father? But… - surprises like seeing Emma again, Emma who looks like her in so many ways… Regina has the strange urge to smell her, to find out if she still smells as musky…

No. This woman, this impostor, needs to leave Storybrook. Immediately. Much as she is desperate to know… _could_ this be her Emma? Even though she…. she…

Even though she was the whole catalyst for the original Curse anyway…

But this woman doesn't know her. Is acting so innocent. Like they've never met. Like they've never almost kissed.

After all these years, Regina wants nothing – nothing, except of course her son's love back – nothing more than to revise that "almost."

So she does what she's done for decades now, decades since she held this woman's body in her hands after Cora…

She pushes her away.


	4. Chapter 4

_Thanks so much for the encouraging reviews! They really keep me going :)_

 _This one has the dreaded character death. It was agony to write. But - it's not the last chapter. That's all I'll say._

 _ **Enchanted Forest, Many Years Ago**_

"What is it now, Dark One?"

Cora feigns disinterest, but her excitement is palpable, as it always is when he contacts her.

"Oh! Such a rude greeting from a mere pupil to your esteemed tutor!" Rumplestiltskin giggles that high-pitched laugh with his wrists aflutter, but he knows there isn't time to waste if he wants Regina damaged enough to bend to his needs.

"Just thought you should know," he presses on, staccato, punctuating every syllable harshly with his tongue, "that your daughter isn't alone up in that dreadful loft you've locked her in. She's with a woman. A new _lover_. Or so she's hoping. And this _lov-er_ – " He punctuates the syllables again to make sure he's stoking every bit of rage Cora has available – "has _magic!_ " He giggles and bounces on the balls of his feet, unable to contain his excitement at the bloodshed that's going to follow. Magic, this blonde woman might have, but Cora undoubtedly has more.

She doesn't wait for an explanation of who this woman is or how she got into her loft. She doesn't wait for an explanation of why Rumple is spying on her daughter or why he is so eager to give her this piece of information.

 _My daughter will not fall in love with some… with some_ woman _… who will ruin her chances of ever being queen!_

A swish of her robes, and she's gone.

* * *

"Storm seems to be letting up," Daniel offers softly, making sure the rough sack he'd put around Henry's shoulders to keep him warm is secure around his body. He'd tried giving the young lad his own cloak, but Henry refused.

"Mm," Henry murmurs, his knees bouncing again even though his arms are wrapped around them, hugging him tight to his chest.

"My mom's really afraid of thunder, I – "

"Your mom, too? Well then, I'm sure they're able to understand and comfort each other, Henry," Daniel says, and Henry's confused for a moment before he realizes his slip. He can't refer to Regina as his mom here. No no no no.

He forces a crooked grin. "Yeah, I hope so. I just… I really want to get to her. I'm the only one she's ever told about being afraid of storms, because I was too, when I was little, and I want… I want to help her. I need to help her."

He kicks at some hay absently and fidgets with the ends of his cloak. He's talking about Regina, of course, but Daniel can't know that. The fortunes of having two moms – same pronouns.

Daniel squints at Henry's distressed face in the dim light of the servants' quarters. He lets out a long sigh. The kid had lasted quite a while, waited long enough. Daniel had restrained him from running right out to get back to the stable, to take on Cora, hand over his mouth, and had had to hold him steady for a long while. He'd waited long enough to get to his mother.

Long enough so that Cora, hopefully, has gone to bed, glad for her victory and therefore unaware of any rescue attempts Henry might make. It was safer, now. To try to rescue them. Right?

He swallows, weighing his options. He felt badly for Henry, and for that strange blonde woman who'd seemed so game to don men's clothing, but mostly, he was sorry for Regina. He'd felt something stir deep inside him the moment he laid eyes on her, and he knew that she, too, was afraid of storms. Afraid enough, apparently, for Cora to lock her in that loft, apparently alone, all night during a really rough one.

"Sadistic woman," he murmurs, and Henry furrows his brow at him.

"My mom?"

Daniel chuckles and lowers his voice before he speaks. He knows they're alone, but still. "No, Regina's mother."

"Yeah," Henry sighs before rising abruptly. "I'm gonna go rescue them. Or try to, anyway. You coming or staying?"

"Coming," Daniel says resolutely, standing as well. "Not sure how we're gonna get to them without magic, but – "

But Henry is already slipping out of the cabin door into the harsh wind and rain. Daniel jogs across the room to follow him when the door slams roughly shut in front of him. He knows better than to call out. He knows that Henry didn't slam the door. He knows the wind didn't, either.

Cora.

When he sees her coming, Henry ducks into the shadows on the side of the building, betting that she'll slam and lock the door with her magic without checking to see who's inside. She looks like she's in a rush to enter the stable. So is he.

He bites his lip so he doesn't jump when the door slams next to him, but he had bet right: she doesn't see him crouching in the dark. He trots after her, depending on the wind and the rain to hide the sound of his footfalls.

When she bursts open the stable doors with her magic – _a little overdramatic_ , he thinks before catching himself remembering that Regina must have gotten her flair for a show-stealing entrance _somewhere_ – he scuttles in after her, hiding himself in an unoccupied horse pen in the corner of the stable.

Sure, he'd intended to try to get Emma and Regina out of the loft, but he knew that now that Cora was back – not asleep and out of the way like he and Daniel had been hoping – he'd have to strategize first. And to do that, he needs to stay out of sight. For now.

He's focused, so focused, on Cora that he doesn't notice a man in a leather suit and mottled, almost sparkly skin slip into the darkness nearby.

* * *

As they descend the last rungs of the ladder leading up to the loft, Regina's foot slips and she collapses into Emma's arms. She lets her body stay limp for longer than necessary, and Emma's fingers sweep across her back, soaking in the heat of her body, longer than necessary. Regina is the first to laugh. She's giddy with the sheer closeness of this woman, the way her arms make her feel safe, protected. The way they're escaping from Cora's sadistic trap. Together.

Emma's laugh joins hers, and they're doubled over with mirth, their foreheads touching, when they hear the door slam open. Emma's first thought is that it might be the wind, but Regina knows without having to look that it's her mother.

She flinches terribly at the sound, loud sounds and slamming doors always meaning pain, sometimes meaning blood, always meaning rage. This time, it will mean all three.

Why did Cora think she was so afraid of thunder, anyway?

She feels rather than hears Emma gasp as the blonde woman watches Cora stalking gracefully toward them, and her mind goes completely blank with wonder as Emma immediately pushes Regina behind her, her chin raised, muscles tight and rigid, looking every bit the hero in Daniel's riding gear.

"Cora," she greets, as though greeting an old adversary.

This, Regina notices, her heart in her throat, confuses Cora, even if only for a moment. She clings to hope. This woman has magic, she has kindness, and she has the capacity to startle Cora. She may well be capable of achieving the impossible. She steps forward slightly, out from behind Emma, and the blonde glances at her as though resigned to the idea that she can't keep her from being where she wants to be. At her side. Protected, but level.

"You know me," Cora's silky smooth reply comes, as she slows her step toward them, stopping about a pace in front of Emma, whose hand protectively behind Regina's back, steadying her without even needing to touch her.

"I know that you locked your daughter in an old rackety loft during a thunderstorm because you didn't get your way," comes the cool reply, and Henry smirks from his hiding place while Regina gulps, fear starting to overtake her despite Emma's calming presence.

No one has ever stood up to Cora before. Not for her sake. Not even her father. And now this woman rolls in here and… Regina's heart swells.

"I don't understand how this is any of your concern," Cora responds lightly, beginning to walk around Emma and Regina, completely ignoring her daughter and simply examining Emma up and down. Emma rotates with her, her hand always hovering behind Regina's back, unwilling to let Cora out of either of their sights. She waits while Cora takes her in, and she tries dimly to imagine what Cora must be seeing: a woman, blonde, young but older than her daughter, dressed from head to toe in men's clothing.

 _Do they care about that sort of thing here?_ She thinks about the kinds of gowns Snow always seems to take it for granted that she wants to wear to balls, and she swallows. _Of course they do._ The conclusion only makes her stand straighter, and she starts calculating how she can possibly get away. She knows Cora won't be able to take her heart, but that doesn't mean she won't be able to do… all kinds of other things to her.

When she's made a complete circle around her prey, Cora speaks again. "Do you love my daughter, traveler?"

Emma lies. "I don't know her well enough yet to love her." Emma tells the truth. "But I care deeply for her, and I know that one day I'll love her better than I've ever even loved myself."

Regina feels her heart melt, and Henry beams in the shadows. Rumplestiltskin fights down a giggle, wondering how good it will taste to watch Regina break so she can be built up in just way that he needs.

Cora smiles and steps closer to Emma. "How did you get her down from that loft? She's never been able to get out of one of my magical binds before."

Emma grins, and heat tugs deep in Regina's core at the cockiness of the expression. "Guess your daughter's stronger than you thought she was."

Cora flexes her fingers almost undetectably and her smile brightens. "Oh, we'll see about that," she says sweetly, as she plunges her hand into Emma's chest.

She was prepared for it, prepared for the icy fingers and the hot pain, but she wasn't prepared for Regina's screams. "Mother! Mother, what are you doing? Stop it, Mother, leave her alone!"

The girl teenager is clawing at Emma's hand, holding it fast in hers, terrified to touch her mother because what if she makes it worse?

The boy teenager is biting his lip so hard that he tastes his own blood, his knuckles white on the wooden post in front of him, blocking him from view. Emma's told Henry about her heart, how Cora couldn't remove it from her chest. That the pulse from Cora's attempt knocked her out, even, so he knows they can all get away. Will all get away. Safely.

But that doesn't make it any less terrifying to watch.

Rumplestiltskin realizes something is wrong before Cora lets it register on her face. She normally would have yanked out the heart by now. But one, two, three seconds have gone by and it is still in this woman's chest. He sends a pulse of his own magic through to Cora's hand: no matter what is keeping this belligerent girl's heart in her chest, even if it's True Love itself, it won't hold up against centuries of Dark One magic. Cora need not know she had help. If she knows, she might let it slip to Regina. And Regina needs to think it was Cora that killed her love. She needs to come to trust Rumplestiltskin. So he must stay hidden, and let Cora take the credit for the kill.

Emma gasps as she feels Cora's fingers tighten and actually start to remove her heart from its veins, from its arteries, feeling it slip through her bones, through her muscles, through her skin. She wants to scream but won't let Regina know she is terrified.

Terrified, because gods, Cora isn't supposed to be able to kill her like this. Terrified, because how in the hell will Henry get home? Terrified, because Regina, Regina, she won't stop screaming and this will break her. She wonders how it will break Henry.

"Regina, make sure Henry – " she starts to say, but when Cora's fingers squeeze in around her heart, she feels it in her lungs. They're closing up, puckering and twisting into each other as she watches her own heart turn to dust. Her whole body starts to go limp, and her eyes find the one person she wants to see last in the world if it can't be Henry. She squeezes Regina's hand with the last bit of strength she has, locking her eyes into those beautiful, tear-filled brown ones.

Regina's eyes. Full of love for her.

 _Not a bad last thing to see_ , Emma thinks as she crumples to the ground.

* * *

Regina isn't even sure what words are coming out of her mouth, isn't sure if she's even saying anything coherent, and she's lost all ability to care.

She latches her body tightly around the limp body of the only person who'd ever defended her against Cora. The woman whose hand never stopped hovering protectively behind the small of her back, the woman who had a son and a woman back home who loved her, who would never again be able to rock her in her arms the way Regina was rocking her in her arms now.

She is only dimly aware of Cora's magic taking hold of her, only dimly aware of her saying words like 'scum' and 'what's best for my daughter' and 'lying schemer', only dimly aware of all these things because the only thing that matters is that she not let go of Emma's body. She has to keep hold of Emma's body, at all costs, at all costs, it doesn't matter if Cora rips her own body limb from limb, she still has to keep herself wrapped around Emma, keeping her body warm, warm, warm, because if it gets cold, if Regina lets go and Emma's body turns cold, then it really will be a corpse and not the woman she was falling in love with, the woman who seemed so confident that one day, she too would love, fully love, properly love, Regina, as she'd never been loved before.

One day that would never come, if she let go of her body. Because if she let go of her body, she would have to accept that her mother had murdered her. Have to accept that she was… that she was dead.

Her throat is burning and she starts to choke on something and she gets the impression that it might be blood, because it really does feel like she's screamed a hole right through her vocal chords, and snot drips down to join her tears and the back of Emma's hand won't wipe it, no, because the back of Emma's hand won't do anything, ever again, except whatever the burial people position her like when they lower her into the –

"No! NO! MOTHER, NO! EMMA! EMMA! EM-MA!"

But her mother's magic is too strong. Stronger, even, than her fiercest attempts to keep latched onto Emma's body. She feels her own being ripped away from Emma, feels the overpowering wrapping of Cora's magic around her, tight like a vice across her whole body, tearing her away from Emma.

A purple cloud of smoke rises up, and she tries to keep holding on to Emma, but Cora has whisked her away from the stables. When the smoke dissipates, there is no more loft. Only the cold stone of her bedroom. There is no more loft. There is no more Rocinante whinnying in the background. There is no more Emma's body clutched in her grasp. There is no more of anything.

And there never will be.

* * *

He can only hear the screams of one of his mothers, and he watches dimly as she collapses to the ground, gathering Emma's body into hers, screaming at Cora. How could you, how could you do this, Emma, Emma, come back, Emma, Emma, come back.

For some reason, he feels no need to scream himself.

He fixes his eyes on his moms, and prepares himself. Prepares himself to die, because surely if Emma's dead, he'll never have been born. The Curse never would have been cast, unless… unless Regina didn't cast the Curse in agony over Daniel. What if it had been agony over Emma?

That must be it. Regina had watched Cora kill her first True Love. But it hadn't been Daniel. It had been Emma.

He sees the whisp of purple smoke and he knows before it even clears that when it's gone, Regina and Cora will both be gone with it. That his mother's body – Emma's body, Emma's dead body – will be left, broken on the floor, having fallen harshly, suddenly, out of Regina's arms.

He hopes he will not hear the dull thud of Emma's limp body dropping to the stable floor.

He does.

Only then do the tears come, only then do the screams rip his throat open. Because he has to live. He can't evaporate into nothingness, with his mothers the last people his eyes will feast on. He has to live, one mother broken, the other… he can't even think the word. He won't.

He crawls across the stables, not caring about discretion – if Cora comes back, she could kill him, he doesn't even care anymore, Regina will never know to miss him, to love him like she loves him in the future, if there is a future, but there must be because he remembers it, but… - he crawls across the stables, knees too weak to stand, gathering hay as he goes and not noticing or caring. He somehow gets to Emma's body and takes her into her arms, screaming and weeping and trying not to wretch, not now that he has to take up Regina's job and hold her so that the reality of her death can't set in.

"Shame about that, dearie. Someone you knew?"

He jumps violently at the sound of that familiar voice, even though it was the one he'd been hoping to hear since they first got trapped in the past.

"She was my mom!" he says fiercely, and though he'd meant to shout it, it comes out only as a broken, soft croak.

"Speak up, laddie, some of us are centuries old: the hearing starts to go, you know?"

"She was my mom! And you let her die!" There's the shout her was looking for, and now he's staring up at Rumplestiltskin, clutching Emma's body in his arms, much like Regina had been staring up at Cora moments before.

"Oh, dearie me: dunno what you think I could've done against that kind of magic, laddie!"

"Don't pretend, Dark One! I know who you are and I know you could have saved her!" His voice is thick with rage and grief, and suddenly he starts understanding how Regina became what she did.

For his part, an irritated anger replaces the amusement in Rumple's eyes. "So you know who I am, and still you speak to me like this? A brave boy! Or a stupid one!"

And suddenly, just as quickly as it had left, hope started creeping back into Henry's heart. Rumplestiltskin was wrong. He wasn't stupid. He was clever. And he knew exactly what to do.

* * *

 _ **Storybrooke**_ **,** _ **2 Years Ago**_

The foolish woman had saved her from the wraith and landed herself back in the Enchanted Forest.

 _Her_ Emma or not – how _could_ it be her Emma? – she wants her back. Desperately. And not, as she tells anyone who asks, just for Henry.

So when she hears that Cora is alive and in the Enchanted Forest – alive and in the same realm as Emma – Regina loses her mind with fear. With terror.

Because this woman, she is beginning to realize, is not a threat. This woman, she's beginning to realize, may actually somehow be… hers. The same woman who died protecting her from Cora all those years ago.

Who broke the Curse that she'd set as revenge against _the world_ for her death. For her murder.

If Emma – if Emma's in proximity to Cora again, if she – if Cora recognizes her (and how could she not?) – she'll kill her again. Just as she had all those years ago.

And Regina can't bear that. She can't bear that woman near her son, can't bear that woman near her. If she's already killed Emma – again? – then she knows, by now, she knows that what Emma would want above all would be to protect Henry from her mother. Her mother cannot be allowed to come to Storybrooke.

So when the opportunity arises to shield the town from Cora's return, Regina takes it, even though it means working with Rumple. Even though it means holding little Henry back in her arms as he screams for Emma – like she once screamed for Emma – because she has lost all hope that Emma could have survived a (second?) encounter with Cora.

"We have to turn it off! You're gonna kill them!" He pushes her off, and she grunts in agony.

"Henry!" she yells as he approaches the well. Her heart breaks as he tells her about changing, as he begs her to lift the spell, as he begs her, at the core, to believe, to _believe,_ that Emma has survived, that _she_ will come through the well, not Cora.

That hope is all that keeps her going through the pain, through the agony of sucking in all that magic, all that lethal green energy. For Emma. For Henry. For herself – because maybe – just maybe – Henry is right to hope.

And when he murmurs for Emma, when she shouts out his name and he runs into her embrace, all Regina can think is how in the hell this can be real. How she can have lost her, only to get her back, now, but all those years ago? Nothing.

"Your mom, she's a… she's a piece o' work. You know?"

She hears the vulnerability in Emma's voice and she has to look away. She has to look away because the last time Emma said anything about her mother, the last time she encountered her mother… She's alive now. She's alive, somehow, inexplicably, alive, and Regina just has to focus, focus, _focus_ on that. Focus on how somehow, she's alive now, and maybe Regina's not losing her mind. Maybe she's finding it again.

"Indeed I do." A pause. A glance at Henry to center herself.

"Welcome back," she whispers, and though she smiles, she wants to be embraced, too. She contents herself with leaning against the tree that's been holding her up, pain from absorbing all that magic still racing through her agonizingly.

Pain that goes away when she looks at those eyes, those eyes that look so long, so hard, so – longingly? No, she must be imagining things – into hers as Emma whispers, "Thanks," and puts her head on top of Henry's.

Regina doesn't look away, and neither does Emma. They stare, silently, into each others eyes until they can't bear the intensity any longer. Until Henry moves slightly out of Emma's grasp to tell them that he's hungry.

They laugh and break contact abruptly. But all Regina sees as they set off through the forest together is those eyes.

Those eyes that she watched die all those years ago.


	5. Chapter 5

_Okay: I think this is going to be a wrap!_

 _Thanks for all the sweet and encouraging reviews - please keep letting me know what you think!_

* * *

Rumplestiltskin barely has the chance to twitch the finger he needs to turn Henry into whatever creature he chooses before the words reach his ears, words that make his heart actually _feel_ for the first time in… far too long.

"You might think I'm stupid, but your son said I'm brave."

Henry clamps his teeth together after the words leave his mouth, clenching his jaw to prevent it from quaking. This had better work.

Sure enough, Rumple freezes with his wrists hanging limp in the air. "What did you say?" he whispers, his narrowed eyes dangerous but also, thankfully, alight with thirst to hear more.

"Your son. Baelfire." Henry opts for simplicity, his jaw unclamping more confidently now that he sees he has Rumplestiltskin's undivided attention. He does not look down at his mother's body.

It will break him.

But suddenly he is no longer on the ground with her, no longer feeling the dull, sharp poking of hay poking into a hole in his riding pants. The back of his head is suddenly stinging, the pain reverberating, oddly, in his nose. His breath leaves his body as he is tossed up, apparently by the air itself, his back and head slammed unceremoniously into the nearest stall door.

He takes his eyes off of Rumplestiltskin, whose glimmering hand is now wrapped around his throat, only to glance down and take account of his own body. No blood that he can detect, everything seems to be in order. Good.

" _How do you know my son?_ " Rumplestiltskin is asking him, shaking him by the throat, his toes barely on the ground. He makes a small choking noise, though strangely, he is no longer afraid. He has Rumple hooked, and he _will_ get what he wants.

The sorcerer seems to realize that Henry can't possibly tell him about Baelfire with his throat closed off. He releases him abruptly, and Henry slumps down, not knowing whether to massage his neck or rub the dully throbbing back of his head. He opts for his neck, and forces out words before Rumplestiltskin can lose patience again.

"You know he fell through a portal to another land," he croaks, staring up at his bio grandfather, knowing he's not one to trust on site, so he'll need to establish his credibility. "I'm from the land he fell into. From… from the future. I know him in…" He dances carefully around the fact that Rumplestiltskin's son is dead. He hopes desperately that it won't show in his face. "I know him in your future. And I need to get back there. With my mom… with my mom's… body."

His voice cracks, and he thinks hard of Neal. He thinks hard about what he would have wanted.

"In my land, your son's called Neal. And Neal – your Baelfire – Neal would want you to get my mom back there. You know he was a good boy. He… he turned into a good man."

His voice crackles again, and he shuts his mouth, trying not to snivel. Rumplestiltskin's lips curl into a sneer. "The future?" He repeats himself, as if he's trying it out. He swoops down, close to Henry's face. "Do I find my boy? Do I… do we make amends?"

Henry's heart twists, but he nods confidently. "Yeah. You do. But he won't ever forgive you if you don't help me get back there. You… when you see him again, you're going to need to prove yourself to him." He stretches the truth a tad. "This… this can help you."

"I do this, and one day, I'll find my boy," Rumplestiltskin repeats, consuming the words as though they're the only things that have offered him any sustenance in hundreds of years. And maybe they are.

Henry nods fiercely, tears stinging his eyes. He's not sure if it's desperation, nerves, grief, terror, or… well, probably just everything.

"I can help you. For a price," Rumplestiltskin says. Henry nods even harder, not trusting himself to speak, terrified that his words will set the man off in another direction, away from the Baelfire-inspired trance he seems to be in.

" _Bae_ ," Rumplestiltskin whispers as he draws a long, serrated knife from a pocket Henry hadn't noticed. The boy flinches, but the sorcerer is watching him with narrowed eyes. Henry bites his lip, knowing, somehow, to keep quiet despite knowing, also, what's next. He sticks out his arm and watches Rumplestiltskin cut into its crook. He grunts as the pain sets in, but it's not as bad as he expected.

The anticipation is always worse.

Rumplestiltskin collects a small vial of the red liquid leaking out of Henry's arm and, after capping it delicately, summons a long black wand into his hands.

"You tell my boy I'm coming for him," Rumplestiltskin says, and again, Henry nods, not trusting his words, not trusting his voice not to betray that talking to Neal isn't something he can do anymore.

His heart lurches. If this doesn't work, talking to Emma won't be something he can do anymore either.

He doesn't have time to reflect on that. He only has time to grab Emma's wrist and pull her body, already growing cold, close to his as they fall into the growing portal that is spewing out of Rumple's wand.

"Thank you," he calls weakly when he can barely see the stable anymore, when Rumplestiltskin is the size of a match and he can feel the freezing Storybrooke air tossing his hair and chilling the back of his neck.

He thinks he hears a faintly distorted giggled coming through the portal, but he can't be sure because now he's falling, falling, Storybrooke materializing before him. He twists his body so that Emma's lands on top of him. It hurts, but not as much as the deadened thump of her limp body hitting the ground had back in the stable. He never wants to hear that sound again.

So it hurts when he hits the ground, sandwiched between his mother's body and a thick sheet of icy snow, but not as much as it could.

The sound that reaches him next is what hurts the most.

The sound of his other mother screaming for him. And for Emma.

* * *

 **Storybrooke, Present Day**

She doesn't like to think of herself as someone who panics; she likes to think of herself as poised, collected, even as devastatingly dry and witty in life-threatening situations.

She doesn't like to think of herself as someone whose chest seizes up and threatens to knock her over with the force of breath that's left her lungs; she likes to think of herself as being made of steel wrapped in a body that is always hers to command.

She doesn't like to think of herself as someone who loves so hard that it has broken her time and again; she likes to think that maybe, one day, it won't.

Break her.

When she got Emma's text – _H in trouble, come 2 barn –_ that potential to break, and to break hard, washed over her again. She hadn't wasted time with driving, she'd wrapped herself in a shroud of purple smoke and whisked herself right there.

But even that had been too slow. They'd been gone already, Zelena's time travel portal beaming with the afterglow of activation, mocking her for being too late.

Again.

Again.

She is on her knees – damn the cold, damn the fact that she's starting to lose feeling in her legs – in the snow in front of the portal when that damned pickup truck pulls up.

She knows David is driving from the erratic sound of nearly crashing, of trying to break too quickly on ice. She doesn't look up. She just stares at the portal. She just wonders where in all of time and space they could be. Not wanting to accept that she probably already knows. She probably already knows.

She just desperately needs to know how she can get to them.

"What happened?" Snow's hardened-with-panic voice reaches her ears as the doors to the pickup slam. Still, Regina doesn't look up.

"Emma and Henry got sucked into that damned portal, I don't know how. _I don't_ – " she repeats louder, with emphasis, because she feels rather than hears more questions forming on David's lips. " _I don't_ know anything else. I just got a text from Emma, but when I got here, they… they were gone."

She feels David's hand hovering behind her back. Is he like his daughter, or is she like him? When did he get so protective of Regina, anyway? _She's not dying_ , she hears Emma's voice in her head, and she thinks that maybe it was somewhere around then that David started protecting her… so, he is like his daughter, then, not the other way around…

Regina blinks, hard, calling her mind to focus on the present. She feels the crunch of snow as Snow drops to her knees next to her. They glance at each other.

Snow's worry threatens to send Regina back into a tailspin. She hopes it doesn't show on her face.

"They'll get back," Snow whispers, and Regina fights an eyeroll. She puts her hand onto where Regina's have frozen over. "They'll get back."

"I don't need a hope speech, I need my son and my – "

Snow raises her eyebrows and she feels David still behind her. The wind, too, goes silent, as though all of Storybrooke is waiting to hear the end of Regina's sentence.

She lowers her voice, abashed. _My what? Emma is… Emma's not mine._ "I need my son," she murmurs, and swallows irritation as Snow exchanges one of her classic _significant looks_ with David.

"Regina!" he shouts, then, and for some reason – she wishes she knew why: is it because she, somehow, seems so much more vulnerable, so much more distraught, than Snow, despite her best efforts to contain her agony? – David is tugging her, not Snow, up off of her knees, is pulling her, not Snow, out of range of the now glowing, now wind-spewing, time portal.

Regina stumbles in the snow and finds support in David's chest as the three of them watch the portal burst open, watch two intertwined figures – one blonde and limp, one relatively tiny and sturdy – fall out of the whirlpool, Emma's body squarely on top of Henry's.

She tries to run forward, tries to wrap both of them in her arms, but something is pulling her back, strong arms around her waist, around her arms. She's always hated being restrained, but somehow, this doesn't feel suffocating. Somehow, this feels safe.

Sure enough, she turns and David is holding onto her tightly, nodding toward the portal, which is still active, still has not closed behind mother and son. Regina nods, agreeing silently to wait for the portal to close before going any closer. She stops struggling, but David does not take his arms away from her body. She finds that she doesn't want him to. She finds that she needs him close.

The portal opening disintegrates with one final inward pull of wind, and this time, she does need David's arms around her to steady her, to keep her from being yanked along with it.

Snow doesn't have the same problem. "Emma!" she screams as she launches herself forward, immediately understanding what Regina's mind is numbly refusing to.

She turns to David, whose hands have turned to ice around her. They say nothing, they just stare for a moment. Snow's agonized cries rise up between them like a cloud of breath, even though neither of their lungs are working. As though on cue, he releases her and they rush forward together.

Snow is peeling Emma off of Henry's winded body, but his hands are refusing to let go of his mother's body. Snow is weeping, weeping, and tears are tracking down Henry's face, but he seems somehow calm. He seems somehow, impossibly, hopeful.

"What happened, Henry?" David chokes out as he collapses to the ground, unsure whether to embrace Henry or to tend to his sobbing wife or to touch Emma's body himself or to wrap his arms around a stunned-looking Regina, whose hands are all over Henry, checking him for injuries, kissing his temple over and over, but whose eyes have not left his daughter's face, whose eyes are wide and horrified and full of grief and terror and pains that David's not quite sure he has the words for. He's not quite sure anyone has the words for anything right now.

Henry chokes out his explanation, his resolve to not break down seeming to weaken with Regina's proximity, with Snow's cries, with David's wild eyes.

"It was Cora, she crushed Emma's heart, but we can – "

And that is what breaks Regina.

"No!" she screams, keeping one hand on Henry while the rest of her – Snow be damned – splays onto Emma's chest, gathering the woman up with her eyes, with her free hand cupping her face, trying to protect her from the cold, from the snow on the ground, from everything, from… from death.

"Henry, did – did she lock Emma and I up in… in the loft first?"

Henry looks bewildered at first as he nods in answer to his mother's desperate croaks, gravel heavy in her voice. He glances at Snow and David for an explanation, but they look as confused as he does until… until the same realization washes over all of their faces at once.

Regina's first True Love… She didn't just have _the same name_ as Emma… She _was_ Emma…

"No, no, no, no, no, not again, no, no, no, no, no."

Regina is moaning now, rocking back and forth on her haunches over Emma's body as she tears her ragged eyes up to look at Henry.

"I am so sorry, Henry. I should have… I never told anyone, I should have warned her, this is all my fault… again… Henry, I am so sorry, my brave boy, I –"

He grimaces and reaches his hand down to meet hers, which has fallen to rest on his leg, just above his knee, a fistful of his riding pants in her hand as though that can keep him, too, from falling away from her.

"It's gonna be okay, Mom – Emma just needs another heart, she just needs someone to split their heart with her. She can live, Mom, she can live and… and it'll all be okay, she just needs someone to split their heart with her. That's why I brought her back, it can work, Mom – "

Snow interrupts, her voice steadier than his, but softer, too; more defeated, more hopeless. More sorrowful. "Henry, I'm so sorry, honey, I am so, so sorry, but that only works with – "

"With True Love, I know." He's staring at Regina, who's shaking her head as she leans down to rest her face in the crook of Emma's neck before righting herself, as though unable to bear the closeness, drawing Henry to her.

"But Henry, honey," Snow tries again, her face contorted with the effort of not breaking completely. Only David's hand on her back steadies her. Even looking at Henry himself is difficult. Because Emma… Emma can't be… and now she has to crush her grandson's hope that he will ever see his mother again… She clutches her stomach and concentrates on swallowing down the wave of nausea that overcomes her.

The agony of losing her daughter – a fresh pain, renewed after all these years, cruelly ripped away from any hope, this time, from any possibility of joy. Because she knows beyond a shadow of doubt that she will never be joyful again.

The desperation in Henry's voice – the torture of losing a mother. She remembers that, too, and it starts to rip open in her own chest.

She has done her share of screaming, but she has not cried yet; now, she feels tears from David's face tracking onto her own cheek, onto her arms.

She forces herself to keep talking.

"Honey, Neal's… Neal's dead. So we can't – "

A soft whisper comes from her left, just above her ear. David. She dimly registers that there's hope in his voice. She dimly registers that Regina, aside from clutching at Henry, has not moved one of her hands, nor her eyes, from Emma's face, her hair, her body.

Just a body, now.

But then there's David, saying, "He's not talking about Neal."

Something stirs inside Snow, and she wonders vaguely why Regina is not the one to jump to say this, why Regina is not the one to protect Henry. Because Regina is always the one to protect Henry. Her hand is still holding his, wrapping around him to bring him to her chest, sure, but why she is not objecting, Snow cannot fathom.

"Absolutely not. Henry, you are _not_ splitting your heart, you are _not_ – "

"He's not talking about himself, either," David tells her, and she doesn't look up at his face to see where his gaze is. She realizes, suddenly, that she doesn't need to. She realizes, suddenly, why the woman on the ground next to her has not stopped caressing Emma's still face.

"Regina."

Her voice comes out ragged, harsh. But the syllables bring a whisper of hope back into her body. The syllables contain the possibility that she might just, now, begin to feel some joy in her bones again.

"Regina," she says again, louder, and she feels David nod and she watches, as though from a distance, as Henry disentangles himself tearfully from his mother's grasp. Regina keeps a fistful of his sweaty tunic in her hands, but she lets him shift away, her eyes still locked on Emma's close ones.

"Mom," he says simply, without a trace of trembling. Gently, like he's calling her back from the underworld itself. Because that's exactly where she feels like she is, and he knows – he knows – that aside from his other mother, he is the only one who can summon her back.

"Henry," she breathes, and her eyes snap off of Emma's body all of a sudden. "You're too brave, my sweet little boy." Then – only then – does she start to break completely. "I convinced you that you were crazy, then your parents spent a year trying to hurt each other, you were kidnapped to Never Land, Neal, and now your – now – " Her voice completely breaks, now, and she tries to gather him to her again. He resists gently, putting his hands over hers as they cup his face over Emma's body.

"Mom, you can save her."

A shudder runs through Regina, a shudder that might crack open the earth and absorb her with its power. "Oh, Henry. My truest believer. I want to, Henry, more than anything, I – all these years, I've spent wishing I could save her, wishing – and vengeance against the husband and child –" Her voice roughens when she says husband, and gets gentle again when she shoves her head toward Snow – "my mother forced on me afterwards felt like the only thing I could – but Henry, none of it, _none_ of it worked, I can't – "

"Mom," he says calmly, having been nodding with her words like Archie does to him when he's rambling, when he's sad, when he's talking about how terrified he was when he was in Pan's clutches, when they were trying to force him to shoot at that other boy… "Mom," he says again, and she breathes, and refocuses on his face.

"Mom, do you love Emma?"

A silence rises in the field, a hush so intense that it threatens to drown everyone in it. And though everyone ensconced in the hush knows the answer – knows the answer as obviously as they know that their daughter, their mother, their… whatever she was to Regina… is laying between them, dead – though everyone knows the answer, they also know, just as much, that Regina has to be the one to say it. That she _has_ to say it.

More silence. And then, Regina says, strained but crystal clear, her eyes never leaving Henry's face, "I love Emma Swan more than I've ever loved anyone except you, Henry."

Snow swallows, David smiles softly through a face full of tears, and Henry just smiles, his desperation from earlier fading. He knows this will work. That's why Pan put him through all of that, isn't it? Because of his faith.

"Then you can save her, Mom. Your heart. It can be for both of you."

Regina breathes out an agonized laugh, tears starting to spill now. "Oh, Henry. Even if I thought it would work, I couldn't give my heart – _my_ heart, Henry, your mother's too good for… mine is corrupted and evil and – "

"And full of love, Regina. Full of love for her." David speaks only at a whisper, like he's afraid of scaring her off. And maybe he is.

"Yes, and also full of hatred that made me… unspeakable things, David… you _know_ what I've done, you _know_ – "

"Yes, Regina," and Snow's using her best teacher voice now, because she's always thought that sometimes, Regina just needs to be handled, "you have done terrible, terrible things. But you – you love more fiercely than the rest of us, don't you? You know you do. So what are you afraid of, Regina? You're giving us all the reasons in the world for you to _not_ save her, when we all know that you also have all the reasons in the world _to_ save her –"

"I destroyed _everything_ because she died, because my mother murdered her. The number of people I killed, the number of people I – " she glances at Henry, and swallows the word _tortured_ – "hurt, and all for…"

The hopelessness of it all… If someone had told her, all those years ago, that the reason there was no body to be found wasn't because Cora destroyed it, but because Henry had taken it back to her future self, because Henry had found a way to save her in the future… if someone had told her all those years ago that she just had to wait decades and decades to see this woman again, that she wouldn't stay dead, that she would just stay dead to Regina for a period, then she could… come back…

If someone had told her all those years ago, she wouldn't have cast the Curse, Emma wouldn't have met Neal, neither of them would have Henry, so Emma wouldn't have died temporarily in the first place…

She stopped trying to rationalize. Time travel made her head spin.

Henry cuts in, the earnestness in his voice trying to forge a path through the overwhelming sense of futility, that all her grief, all her life, had been based on a lie, on a lack of knowledge… His voice reminds her that yes, sure, maybe all these things are true; but it's also true that if they hadn't happened, she wouldn't have this chance, right now, to get Emma back…

"You're different now, Mom. I know you think you don't deserve her, but you do. You do."

Regina tries to speak, fails, wets her lips, and tries again. Henry is starting to tremble with cold. She touches his tunic, sending a warming spell through him. He stops shivering. She gives him the smallest of smiles.

"And you deserve a mother, and Emma – " Her voice breaks. "Emma deserves her life with you." She says it softly, steadily, like she's steeling herself for something. And… she is.

She looks down at Emma and caresses her face one more time. She thinks about kissing her mouth, but she's always found that creepy, kissing someone when they're unconscious like that. Dead like that. She wants Emma to be fully conscious when they…

Her eyes snap back up, locking into David's this time. "For this to work, she has to love me back. True Love can't work only one way. She has to love me back."

Her quiet desperation makes her statements into questions, and David lets go of Snow and kneels in front of Regina, taking her hands into his own and holding her eyes so she can't look away.

"She loves you back, Regina. I can't imagine what you've been going through all these years, learning to trust her even though she had the face and name of the woman you'd loved – but Regina, it's the same woman. It's the same woman, and she loves you. You know she does. Think. Think of everything."

She thinks.

The door had been ajar – idiot Charmings – when they'd left the room after interrogating Regina about Archie's apparent death. Emma's voice rings in her ears.

"I know that look. I know _her_. I believe her."

And before that.

"Let her go, let her go, _let her go._ "

"She's not dying."

Saving her from falling into a portal.

Emma's eyes meeting hers over Henry as they hugged him back to life when they saved him from Never Land. The look in those eyes, speaking of… of trust, of relief, of joy. Of… family.

Of love?

But most of all, most of all, the thing that did it for Regina – _she loves me, and if I do this, if it works… it will work… she can love me, we can love each other openly, no more denying, no more holding back –_ the thing that did it, the last thing on her mind when she took her hands from David's, caressed Henry's face, and plunged her hand into her own chest… the last thing on her mind was Emma's hand.

Emma's hand, protectively hovering behind her back whenever she was in danger. Reaching out for her, always. Never touching, never overbearing, never wanting to take power, control, away from her. Knowing that's been done too many times in her life. But being there. Always being there. She always caught it from the corner of her eye, always felt it. And it was always there. Whenever they were in danger, there was Emma's hand, hovering near her back. Protective.

Of course this will work. Of course they love each other.

She does it quickly. It hurts – holding her own heart in her hand, yanking it out of her own chest – it hurts like she cannot describe. But she does it, and she does not flinch, because she is too hopeful to mind the pain. Too hopeful that all the pieces are coming together. This woman, this Emma… _has_ been her Emma all these years.

And now, they will all know. And now, they can all… _be_.

She doesn't hesitate. She stares, not at her work, but at Emma's still face as she takes her heart into both hands and tears it in two. Her chest throbs, her eyes swim. She ignores it all. She plunges one hand back into her chest, almost casually, almost carelessly, and then, tenderly, gently… lovingly… she slips her other hand – holding a piece of her own heart, the red pieces glowing insistently amidst the black, into Emma… _her_ Emma… into Emma's empty chest.

Nobody breathes. Everyone stares at Emma's face. Regina links her fingers through Emma's left hand: Henry's grip is like iron on the right.

There is no rise and fall of the chest. There is no fluttering of eyelids. There is nothing.

Regina lets out a strangled sob.

"Kiss her, Mom," Henry whispers. "She doesn't know. She doesn't know you're ready to admit that you love her. Kiss her. Let her know."

Regina squints at him slightly, but she trusts him. Her son, her son who unknowingly led Emma to her death all those years ago – today? – when he wandered into that portal. Their son, their son who brought Emma back all those years ago – today – so that Regina could bring her back to life. Bring them all back to life.

Here, it wouldn't change the past. Her younger self had always assumed that Cora had desecrated the body before getting rid of it. It had fueled her fire.

Here, it wouldn't change the past, but it would become their future.

She licks her lips. She's never been nervous about kissing anyone. Not since she tried to kiss Emma all those lifetimes ago.

But she's nervous now.

She licks her lips again. She runs a soft finger across Emma's lips. The snow, the very earth itself, around them disappears as she kisses one eyelid, then the other, then brings her lips to Emma's left ear.

"I love you, Em-ma."

Her lips graze Emma's, gently, softly, barely touching. A tear splashes from her face onto the resting woman's cheek.

She withdraws. She swallows. Humiliated hopelessness descends on her like the air itself is choking her.

And then she hears the breath. And then she watches those lips curve into a twisted smile and sees those eyes, those eyes that she'd never thought she'd see again, twinkling underneath her.

Her voice is hoarse, but it is hers, and Regina would happily listen to it for the rest of her life. "Took you long enough."

"Mom!" Henry's strangled cry rings out into the night, and he thrusts himself down onto Emma's chest, bear hugging her prone figure.

David laughs in relief, in joy, in ecstasy, as he tugs gently at Henry's shoulders. "Whoa, Henry, let your mom breathe a little."

Snow is sobbing, grasping at Emma's legs, the only parts of her she can reach since Henry's claimed her entire upper body.

Most of her upper body, anyway, because Regina's fingers are still linked with Emma's. Tears are tracking silently down her face, unstoppable, but she's withdrawn, now, leaning back instead of forward into Emma, the only physical sign that she did, in fact, just kiss her back to life being their connected hands. Snow glances at Regina's face through her tears, and she looks… almost embarrassed.

"Regina," she half-whispers, cautiously, knowing what dangers lay in prodding at the woman when she's feeling particularly vulnerable.

This time, though, she has eyes only for Emma. They won't leave her face, as though if they do, she'll go back to being… dead.

At the sound of Snow's none-too-subtle whisper, though, Emma turns her face away from Henry and toward Regina. She grunts in exertion as she shifts around in the snow to lean up on her elbows. Four sets of hands reach out to support her, and she laughs shakily.

"You okay?" she whispers, her eyes as soft as her voice.

"You… you…" Regina chokes. Emma nods, a twisted grin forming on her face.

"I was dead for years but also for only a few minutes, and you feel every single way that it's possible to feel about it all, huh?" she asks, losing her breath with the sentence because, yes, she was just dead for decades or for minutes, depending on your point of view. Recently dead, either way.

She grunts again as she shifts most of her upper body's weight to one elbow, lifting the other hand up gingerly to touch Regina's face. Regina gasps as though she's considering flinching away from the touch, but she steadies as Emma's eyes lock into hers.

"You love me?" Emma asks, and Regina scoffs.

"Are you really so needy as to have to be told after I _brought you back to life, Miss –_ " She interrupts herself as four sighs erupt around her, David's soft and with a trace of laughter, Snow's loud and long and irritated, Henry's tinted with a bit of an affectionate groan, and Emma's almost undetectable, her lips closed and pursed into a resigned smile, absorbing most of the sound of her adoring exasperation.

" _Alright_ ," Regina swats out with her voice, and it sounds more her teenage self than it has since… well, since Emma… She's safe now. She's safe, and she's going to always be safe, now. _I'm never letting her go again._

Regina smiles broadly, fully, lighting up her whole face in a way it hasn't lit up since before Snow gave Henry that damned – that blessed – story book.

"I love you, Emma Swan. You idiot."

She gathers the beaming woman into her arms again, but this time without a trace of despair; this time, she feels only the thrill of Emma's lips moving against hers, smiling into their kiss, the ecstatic way their hearts – their _heart_ – finds each other's rhythm and swell in their chests in unison, the pooling heat in her belly as Emma's hands tangle into her hair and their tongues start to flirt with each other.

They both hear Snow loudly clearing her throat, and Henry and David's laughter outweighs Snow's groans as they only hold each other tighter, kiss each other fiercer, until Emma runs out of breath and collapses into the crook of Regina's neck.

She pulls back wearing the brightest grin any of them had ever seen on her, and her voice is both shaky and sturdy when she says it: "I love you too, Regina."


End file.
